New Green Shoes

Beautiful new shoe found on sale

The social highlight of my week is Sunday Lunch. Sometimes Sunday Lunch is an extravagant, crowded affair, and sometimes Sunday Lunch is simple and select. It depends on who has offered to have Sunday Lunch that week, and how much of an effort he or she wants to make, and who is available for an invitation, and how many friends he or she would like to bring with him or her.

There is sometimes a difficulty when Sunday Lunchers gather themselves up from After-Mass Gin to go to Sunday Lunch only to discover that nobody has cooked it, or that half the party has mysteriously disappeared without a word to the other half, and is probably on its way to a super-exclusive Sunday Lunch at some deliciously exotic location. On such unhappy occasions the forlorn remnant usually straggles off to a pub.

However, as the weather has been so beautiful since July muscled out soggy old June,  a group of us Lunchers recently had a most glorious picnic instead. We sat on a hill in a park clad in all our Sunday Fogey Finery and hid our bottles from the view of a ranger, who turned out to be much more opposed to the smuggling away of pond turtles by the party next to us than to bottles. The charm of novelty and the simplicity of just chipping in £10 each at Waitrose enhanced the charms of the sunshine and the view.

This Sunday, however, there were so few Sunday Lunchers around that the other woman present and I just sloped off after Gin to George Street to "do errands." Errands included taking a pair of linen trousers back to its shop to have its stubbornly lingering security tag removed, mooning at clothes purportedly "on sale" and eating lunch in an elegant and lady-like restaurant studded with Mediterranean ceramic plates.

Although we would not want to forego the company of gentlemen Sunday Lunchers more than once or twice a year, my friend and I found the change as good as a rest. In its way, it had the same charm of novelty as our picnic, and there was no-one around to make off-colour comments unsuitable for ladies' ears, St. Alban.* And after lunch was eaten and paid for, there was no dissenting deep-timbred voice to prevent a stroll to the shoe shop in Frederick Street.

As a matter of fact, I do not buy shoes very often, being love rich and cash poor. This makes buying new shoes a most delectable treat comparable only to buying new shoes. And being able to find such pretty shoes as the above on sale for only £25 made it even more delightful, as this is the east coast of Scotland, where we brag about how cheap we bought things on sale, in contrast to the unspeakable sybarites of the west coast, who perversely brag about expense. And to top things off, these new shoes are my husband's favourite colour, so there was a very good chance that he would exclaim "How nice!" before "How much?" when I got them home.

Slightly too big but sacred indoor shoes.

Finally, the green sneakers I wear with green finery when outdoors--like many Canadians, I carry my indoor shoes around in a bag--fell completely apart on the way from the restaurant (where I wore my indoor shoes) and so I had to buy new shoes or walk to a bus-stop in my slightly too big but sacred indoor shoes.

Therefore, finding the above shoes in my size and in my husband's favourite colour for only £25 was one of those rare shoe-buying miracles one hears about. In fact, the self-destruction of my sneakers even made the Sunday shopping the correct response to an emergency as opposed to a venial sin. "I'll wear them out," I said airily to the clerk of the new shoes, meaning no irony.

Finally, I virtuously remembered to buy groceries for my husband's supper, and so went home in a glow of satisfaction, smelling of roses, at 6 PM, which was also a nice change from going home at 1 AM in a fog of booze, smelling of cigars.

*That said, so many young women these days curse like troupers and make so many naughty jokes in mixed company that much must be forgiven of those boys who did not grow up around trad Catholics, homeschooled girls or Miss Marple. I crossed out "these days" because an elderly Englishman I know drops the F-bomb in mixed company with such regularity that I assume the women of his generation do too, or did.

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July donations: Thanks very much to R.C. That was a very nice Canada Day present.